'Gaddafi raped, beat schoolgirls between checking his E-mails'

Slain Libyan dictator Muammer Gaddafi beat and raped schoolgirls he kidnapped and used as sex slaves, a reporter has revealed in a new book. French reporter Annick Cojean gathered horrific accounts from the girls forced into the former Libyan dictator’s harem for the account published last week.

Lust for power: The book Prey: In Gaddafi’s Harem reveals the slain dictator as a sadist who even urinated on the teenagers in his captivity

One victim, named as Soraya, was 15 when she was abducted in 2004 by the late tyran’s ‘talent scouts’ after she was chosen to give him a bouquet when he visited her school. Gaddafi had accepted the gift before placing his hand on her head, a sign she now realises meant ‘I want this one’.

The next day women in uniform appeared at her mother’s hair salon in Sirte and explained Gaddafi or The Guide, wanted her for another ‘bouquet’ ceremony. She was driven for hours through the desert, had blood taken and her breasts measured before being stripped and shaved. After being dressed in a thong and low-cut white satin dress, Soraya was escorted to Gaddafi’s bedroom and was shocked to find him naked.

“He grabbed my hand and forced me to sit next to him on the bed,” she recounts, adding, ‘I didn’t dare look at him.” ‘He said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m your papa. That’s what you call me, isn’t it? But I’m also your brother and your lover. I’m going to be all that for you. Because you are going to stay and live with me forever.’” Initially she fought him off and was sent off for lessons from Mabrouka, a sour-faced woman in charge of his ‘harem’.

He had said, ‘Teach her, educate her and bring her back.’ Describing herself as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ Gaddafi repeatedly raped, beat and urinated on the teenager during her five years in captivity, according to the book Les Proies: Dans le harem de Kadhafi (Prey: In Gaddafi’s Harem).

Sometimes other girls would join them. When another girl performed oral sex on Gaddafi he would tell Soraya to ‘Watch and learn’. Another victim, Houda, who was 18 when she met Gaddafi said he abused her for five years after she agreed to have sex with him if he freed her brother.

Well known as a tyrant, the women’s accounts have helped to paint Gaddafi — or Papa Muammar as he liked to be called — in an even more monstrous light, outing him as a repugnant sadist for whom rape was a daily activity.

One girl describes how she was forced to wear lacy underwear and watch porn films. She added that Gaddafi had ‘needed’ several girls every day. He also raped boys, sometimes in Soraya’s presence. The book also reveals how Gaddafi’s sex slave victims are still suffering after being rejected by their families for having sex when they were not married.